CallFire

1. Use an IVR to identify voters.

   

   Implementing an effective GOTV strategy requires identifying your campaign’s support early to push them to the polls on Election Day. Interactive Voice Response technology allows you to send polls out in the field and get that data directly into your voter file. The automation of the IVR technology allows you to conduct large scale polls at the fraction of the cost of hiring a call center. Its scalability and cost effectiveness make the IVR an integral component to a winning campaign strategy of identifying voters.

2. Increase your call volume with a power-dialer.

   

   Manual hand dialing is a thing of the past. If you’re still hand dialing from call sheets you’re not maximizing your volunteer’s time and not reaching enough voters. The rapid connection rate of power dialing allows you to call through your voter file at two to three times speed of manual hand dialing. The dialer streamlines the calls by skipping bad numbers, busy signals, and voicemail. Your volunteers will find call time to be more effective and far more pleasurable. In addition, this cloud based software allows your volunteers to organize and make calls from home and their own remote locations.

3. SMS text messaging to communicate a call to action with supporters.

   

   A successful political campaign needs to rapidly communicate call to actions to supporters. In 2008, the Obama Campaign showed how effective SMS text messaging can be as a tool to rapidly organize supporters. Since 2008, more campaigns have used SMS text messaging to power their field programs. In Massachusetts, Scott Brown was able to use texts to send out rapid call to actions. When his opponent appeared on a radio program, Brown texted his supporters to call the station. 90% of the calls to the station were from Brown supporters.

4. Make robocalls  more dynamic with navigable IVR’s.

   

   Voice broadcast political robocalls are a tried and true method of rapidly getting your message out to thousands of voters. With navigable IVR‘s you can tailor your message to the issues and values that are important to the voter. Voters can chose from a selection of issues that are important to them and hear the candidate’s stance on those issues.  These customizable messages also allow you to communicate very specific information on issues and polling locations that are highly targeted.

5. Integrate your web platform with your telephony campaigns.

   

   Successful voter outreach programs should be made easily accessible for volunteers. In the 2010 election, a number of innovative campaigns allowed their volunteers to call from home by providing a link to an autodialer system and dramatically increased the volume of GOTV calls. By creating a volunteer portal to your dialer on the campaign homepage, you allow your volunteers to call from home at their own convenience and effectively get out the vote.

6. Optimize Your Social Networking Campaign By Targeting Your Message.

   

   During the 2008 presidential election, social media revolutionized the way candidates connect to voters and engage supporters. The Obama campaign gathered followers through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. However, a “Like” on Facebook, a YouTube view or a re-blog on Tumblr may not directly affect the ballot box. Now each campaign must answer an important question: How do we turn a digital following into real-world volunteers? Digital followers that feel connected to the campaign will be more likely to make the leap from online supporter to offline volunteer.

7. Link your Voterfile data with your geo-targeted web ads.

   

   Today’s Ad-networks can deliver highly targeted ads to voters and should be a staple of your ad strategy. You can link your web content to your Voterfile data to create “smart” web ads that allow you to aim your message at voters in a specific district or demographic. The content of your ads should be relevant to the voters viewing the advertisement; single mothers, sportsmen, and students (for example) should have specific, tailored content that addresses issues they’re likely to care about. Working through data aggregators you can link IP addresses to individuals in your voter file and your campaign can deliver highly targeted messages.

8. Supplement your existing ad strategy with Video and Rich Media.

   

   Web content is saturated with advertising, and it’s getting harder to sift through the banner ads and pop-ups that get in the way of the content we seek. That’s why it’s important for your ads to mimic the content that people want to find. Streaming content is more likely to generate attention. Video and rich media allow you to communicate a compelling story that a static banner ad cannot.  You can even make an interactive ad using Flash or HTML5 to create an interactive experience (like a quiz, game or informational widget) without the user ever leaving the webpage they were visiting.

As you can see, there are a multitude of ways campaigns can leverage cloud technology to increase campaign awareness and drive supporters to the polls. For more information on how you can get your campaign running in the cloud, visit our GOTV best practice page.

Here are some additional resources to help your business text message marketing campaign:

• Huffington Post: 2012, A View From the Cloud
• New Organizing Institute: Organizer’s Tool Box

Sometimes we at CallFire speak our own language. Hopefully this article acts as a Rosetta stone for all your calling needs.

Admin/Admin Login – An admin (administrator) is the CallFire account holder. The admin login is where you create and manage all your campaigns, whether they be Voice Broadcast, Cloud Call Center, IVR, buying phone numbers, or SMS.

Agent/Agent Login – An agent is solely for Cloud Call Center campaigns. An agent is a person actively making the outbound calls. You’ll use the agent login to begin dialing on a campaign that was already created by the admin user.

Agent Barge – Agent barge is a quality control measure that allows an admin to barge, or listen in on, calls as they’re being made by the agents.

Agent ID – The agent ID is a number assigned by CallFire each time an agent begins dialing through the Cloud Call Center. Once the agent inputs the correct agent ID, the agent pop-up window with the campaign script will appear, and the system will begin dialing.

Analytics Tag – This advanced IVR function sends a page-view that will be factored in to Google Analytics.

Answering Machine Detection (AMD) – The AMD capability will determine whether the call has been answered by a live person, or by a machine. When AMD is enabled, you can program your campaign to treat live answers and answering machines differently, such as hanging up and moving on the next call or leaving a message.

API – Application Programming Interface. This is coder speak for our software code that allows a developer to integrate other software into CallFire, or to build custom software.

API Key – This is a code that grants a developer access to the CallFire API. You can find your unique API key in your account settings.

Autodialer – The autodialer is what makes the Cloud Call Center so powerful. It does the dialing for you, so there’s no dialing by hand.

Autoresponder/Auto-reply – An autoresponder is a text message that is sent automatically in response to an incoming text.

Call Ratio – This is the ratio of numbers dialed at a time to a single agent. For instance, a 1:1 ratio means that each agent’s autodialer is only dialing one number at a time. A 2:1 ratio means that the autodialer is dialing two numbers at a time, and will connect the agent to the first live answer. A higher calling ratio helps get through a list more efficiently; it decreases time between calls and ups the possibility of connecting to live leads.

Call Transfer – A call transfer is the ability for an agent to forward a call to a supervisor or other party. All he/she has to do is input the 10-digit phone number into the agent interface and the call will be routed accordingly.

CPM – Calls per Minute. This is the rate at which Voice Broadcast calls go out. By default, broadcasts are processed at 50 calls per minute, but this can be adjusted in your campaign dashboard.

CRM – Customer Relationship Management. You can integrate your CallFire campaigns with certain CRM providers, such as SalesForce, using our API.

DID Number – Direct Inward Dial Number. DID Number is basically an industry term for a phone number.

DNC - Do Not Call. There are two different DNC lists: the Federal Do Not Call List, against which you should scrub your list prior to uploading your contacts. Then you also have an internal CallFire DNC list, which allows people you call to unsubscribe from future calls.

DTMF – Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency, also known as touch-tone. DTMF assigns a different touchtone to each key on the telephone keypad, so it can distinguish one keypad input from another.

Get Tag – This IVR command calls any URL or http request from your IVR.

Google Talk Tag - This IVR command will automatically initiate an instant message to your Google account.

Goto Tag – This tells your IVR to go to a certain part of your phone tree. For instance, you might have a sound file that reads, “Press 4 to repeat the options.” Upon pressing 4, the Goto tag would repeat the part of your IVR that you had already programmed.

Goto XML Tag – This advanced IVR command calls the specified URL and executes the returned CallFire XML.

Hangup Tag – The hangup tag tells your IVR to hang up and end the call.

Hosted IVR – A hosted IVR is a phone menu that does not require any hardware or special equipment, such as an on-premises PBX (private branch exchange). It’s hosted because it’s housed in the cloud.

If Tag – This advanced IVR command evaluates a javascript expression and reacts accordingly whether the expression is true or false.

Inbound – A call initiated from someone else, coming in to your line.

IVR - Interactive Voice Response. An IVR is essentially a phone menu, or a phone tree. It’s programmed to react to keypad inputs.

Keyword – For an SMS campaign, a keyword is the word that is texted. For instance, when the Red Cross says, “Text JAPAN to 50555,” JAPAN is the keyword, and 50555 is the short code. Keywords will be available on CallFire SMS campaigns beginning summer 2011.

Key Press – This command tells your IVR what to do once a digit on the telephone keypad is pressed.

Live Answer – A person who answers the phone, as opposed to an answering machine.

Long Code – A 10-digit phone number that can send and receive texts.

MachineSkip - This feature detects answering machines, and filters them out of your Cloud Call Center campaigns. When it detects an answering machine, it will automatically leave a pre-recorded message, so your agent doesn’t have to do a thing. The MachineSkip feature is available on the Standard- and Pro-level campaigns.

Max Transfer Rate – The maximum number of transfers your Voice Broadcast campaign will allow at any given time; when the maximum is reached, the broadcasts will pause until your campaign returns below the maximum.

Outbound – A call initiated by you to one of your contacts.

Passcode – The campaign passcode is the password that the admin assigns to access a Cloud Call Center campaign.

Phonebook – A phonebook is a contact phone list maintained in your CallFire account. Watch this video to learn more about working with phonebooks.

Play Tag – This IVR command plays an assigned sound file or performs text-to-speech.

Press-1 Transfer – During a Voice Broadcast, if a press-1 transfer is enabled, the called person can press 1 and be connected to your business. You can also assign a different keypress to transfer your calls, but the capability is generally referred to as “press-1″ anyway.

Press Menu – This IVR command prompts the caller with several options, for instance, “Press 1 for our address, Press 2 to speak to someone in Sales.” You’ll need at least one “Play” menu to present these options.

Power Dialer – The Power Dialer is what makes CallFire’s Voice Broadcasting capability so powerful. It has the ability to dial thousands of numbers, all at once.

Record Tag – This IVR command records the remainder of the call, or will begin recording with a beep and stop by pressing pound (#). When you record a message using CallFire’s Voice Recording Utility, our IVR is using the Record Tag, in conjunction with the advanced Stash and Get tags. You can see a video demonstration of the Record Tag here.

SAN Number - Subscription Account Number. Telemarketers may need to obtain a SAN from the Federal Trade Commission in order to call consumers legally. Click here to find out how to get a SAN.

SetVar Tag – (Set Variable) This advanced IVR command creates a variable which can be used later.

Short Code – A 5- or 6-digit number that can send and receive texts.

SmartDrop – During a Cloud Call Center campaign, the agent can press the SmartDrop button on the interface, and it will leave a pre-recorded message for the answering machine. The agent does not have to wait for the beep or speak into the voicemail; this allows the agent to move on to the next call.

SMS - Short Message Service. An SMS is a text message.

Stash Tag – This advanced IVR tag stores the varname (variable name) and value in the call details report in your CallFire account. See a video demonstration of the Stash tag here and here.

Subset Campaign - A subset campaign duplicates all the settings of an original campaign, but applies it to just part of a phonebook. For instance, you might want to run a subset campaign to call back the portion of your contact list who did not receive your original message. This video will show you how to set up a subset campaign.

Tag - A tag can refer to an IVR command, such as a play tag or a record tag, but when used by itself, it generally means what’s found on the “My Numbers” page. Tags can be useful to help you keep your phone numbers straight. For instance, if you put one phone number on a magazine ad, and a different phone number on your website, you may want to tag each respective number “magazine” and “website.”

Text-to-Speech (TTS) - The text-to-speech engine allows you to program voice prompts on the fly. For instance, if you wanted your IVR to read an individual’s account number, you would use CallFire’s text-to-speech capability.

Transfer Tag – This IVR command connects the active call to a specified phone number. For instance, a political campaign might use a transfer tag to connect the call to a voter’s congressional office.

Voice Broadcast- Voice Broadcast is a type of CallFire campaign that allows you to send a pre-recorded phone message to your contacts. Learn more about Voice Broadcast here.

VoIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol. VoIP is a kind of technology that allows calls to be connected over the internet. However, CallFire VoIP should not be confused with residential VoIP such as Skype or Vonage; we offer an enterprise-level, redundant, fiber-based platform for better reliability and call quality.

Whisper – A whisper is a short message that will be played before an incoming call is connected. This can help you better serve your incoming calls. For instance, if you have one phone number assigned for real estate properties for sale, and one phone number assigned for people who want to sell their real estate, you can set a whisper that will tell you “This call is regarding properties for sale,” before you greet the caller. You can enable the Whisper feature on your “My Numbers” page in your CallFire account.

White Label Program – CallFire’s White Label Program allows approved vendors to re-sell CallFire products using their own branding. An improved version of the White Label Program will be unveiled in late 2011.

by Kimberly Kohatsu, Director of Marketing

Marketers tend to think of opt-in marketing as a limitation, but I honestly think it’s a benefit. For one, opt-in means you’re communicating with people who say it’s okay for you to communicate with them. That means you’re not annoying them, which will help the success of your campaigns. And perhaps more importantly, opt-in voice broadcasts and text blasts save you money in the end. You’re not paying for calls or texts to people who don’t want them, which is only going to help control costs. So how should you get your opt-in list to grow? Here’s 10 suggestions:

1. Tell your customers what they’ll get if they opt in

Are you planning on sending a monthly discount code? What about exclusive, text-only invites to sales? Give your customers a good reason to opt in, as well as an idea of how frequently you plan to contact them (monthly, weekly, daily, etc). You can also incentivize opt-ins by offering an immediate benefit, such as a discount or free gift.

2. Make sure they know they can always opt out

Sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but customers will be a lot less hesitant to sign up if you reassure them they can push 8 or text STOP at any time to unsubscribe. CallFire will automatically add your unsubscribes to your internal DNC list, making your list easier to manage, and making your customers more comfortable in joining.

3. Use your existing sign-up pages to drive subscriptions

If your customers use any sort of form on your website, include a check box to opt in to your text or marketing campaigns. You might want to put this directly below the field where your customers input their phone number, like in the example below:

4. Create an email marketing campaign

Email your customers and tell them about your great new marketing initiative. Tell them what you plan to send to them via phone calls or texts, and include an opt-in call-to-action such as “click here to subscribe” or “Text SMSFIRE to 88202.”

5. Drive subscriptions with social media

Encourage your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn contacts to subscribe to your list. Have your whole team share these posts with their contacts, so that their contacts can tell their contacts, and so on.

6. Get their attention with point-of-purchase signage

Got a physical storefront? What better place to reach your existing customers? Make a sign to hang near the register, in the window, or on tabletops. One note of caution, however—don’t simply have a clipboard where people can add their phone numbers, because most carriers won’t accept a paper sign-up as a valid opt-in should you ever face a complaint. Instead, encourage your customers to subscribe with their cell phones, such as “Text SMSFIRE to 88202.”

7. Hold an employee competition for signups

Do your employees spend a lot of time interacting with customers? Run a month-long competition to see who can get the most subscriptions, and offer a great prize to the winner, like a gift certificate or a paid day off.

8. Append an opt-in message to your sales receipts

Include a short message about your voice and text promotions every time the register rings.

9. Design a CallFire IVR to solicit opt-ins from customers who call your business

When customers call your business, add an option to your phone menu to subscribe to your list. Example: “Press 1 to receive discounts via text message, and Press 2 to speak to a representative.” When callers press 1, design your IVR to record the calls and prompt the caller to leave the cell phone number he’d like to subscribe. If you need help doing this, my colleague Ryan can show you how in this video.

10. Keep an online archive for reference

Once you’ve been doing voice or text broadcasts for a while, house some of your past deals somewhere on your website. Then, when prospective subscribers are considering  opting in, they will have a good idea of whether they’d benefit from your company’s messages. Visit “Past Deals” on LivingSocial if you need an example.

If you have your own tips to share, please do so in the comments. And if you have success with any of these suggestions, please share your stories too. Good luck with your marketing campaigns!

by Kimberly Kohatsu

The protests in the Wisconsin state Capitol are now in their second week, and the political dialogue has gone beyond collective bargaining and the state budget. Now, there are calls for the recall of certain Wisconsin lawmakers.

Two national liberal political groups, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and Democracy for America (DFA), used CallFire’s Hosted IVR to send automated calls to 50,000 constituents in five Wisconsin state-senate districts.

Aimee Auer, a New London, WI schoolteacher, recorded the message, and it was uploaded into the CallFire interface. The voter interest poll was then programmed using CallFire’s drag-and-drop IVR Designer. Each keypad input is recorded for reporting, and listeners can be connected directly to their state senators office using a call transfer command. Listen to the result below:

Adam Green, co-founder of PCCC, sums up the strategy in three words: “Offense, offense, offense.” Green revealed to MSNBC that initial results of the calls show 59.7% of Republican voters would support recall efforts if the targeted state senators ultimately support Gov. Scott Walker’s bill, S.B.11. Green was able to see these survey results in real-time through CallFire’s campaign dashboard.

Michael Snook, Director of Targeting and Analytics for PCCC, noted, “CallFire made it possible for us to produce and deploy this effective advocacy campaign—quickly, and on budget. With CallFire’s simple, flexible XML environment, we were able to design a campaign that would connect with thousands of Wisconsin voters to voice their support for working families against Republican class warfare, and offer them the opportunity to connect directly with their elected officials.”

For a recall to be successful, petitioners must gather a number of signatures equal to 25% of the general electorate. If enough signatures are gathered, an election is held, and the official must run for his/her job again.

A conservative group, the American Patriot Recall Coalition, is also testing the waters for recall—except they are hoping to recall seven of the 14 Democratic state senators who fled the capitol in protest of Walker’s bill.

There are currently labor disputes in Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and even the NFL. Any of these political groups could use CallFire’s intuitive platform for voter outreach and education, volunteer phone banking, and text messaging campaigns. Watch CallFire’s CEO, Dinesh Ravishanker, explain how political campaigns have benefitted from using CallFire.

by Kimberly Kohatsu

CallFire is proud to sponsor Twiistup, LA’s biggest technology event. Twiistup 8 will take place February 9 and 10 at the Skirball Cultural Center. In between all the great speakers and startup presentations Twiistup has to offer, CallFire is holding a scavenger hunt, where one lucky participant will win an Xbox Kinect.

The scavenger hunt is a creative way for participants to experience some of the CallFire products. The first clue is going to be delivered via SMS, and the third clue was built using a CallFire Inbound IVR. (The second and fourth clues are going to be surprises, we can’t give everything away)

The IVR asks a series of multiple choice questions, much like a business might do if it were creating a phone tree. Each question has its own KeyPress menu, which will tell you if your answer was right and direct you to move on, or tell you your answer is wrong and to try again. I recorded each of the clues over the phone using CallFire’s voice recording utility. Then I designed the phone tree using the drag-and-drop commands on CallFire’s IVR Designer. When I was done, I sent a test call to myself to see if the IVR was functioning correctly. I had to do it a couple times before I got the hang of it, so here are a few tips I learned along the way:

• In order to stay organized, make sure you name all your sound files something meaningful. CallFire will give your file a default name, so before you do anything, rename these files. I used names like “Q1″ and “A1″ for question and answers, as well as “Incorrect” and “Welcome” for the appropriate messages.
• Also give your tags and menus meaningful names. My IVR was fairly complicated, so this helped me keep everything straight. The CallFire system will default to only the name of the tag, meaning it will name a play tag “play” and a goto tag “goto.” I would edit these names further so that I could easily see I was dealing with the “Q3 menu” or that for a certain keypress I was configuring “Q2 Press1 Incorrect.” The more indents and conditions you have, the easier it is to get confused. By naming each of my menus and tags the same way, I was able to keep myself on track.



• Keep your sound files simple, with only one element in each. In my first attempt to build this IVR, I put the answer to Question 1 in the same sound file as the reading of the next question, Question 2. This made it more difficult to offer people the option to repeat Question 2 without having to hear the answer to Question 1 again. So I re-recorded myself and kept these two elements separate, and that made the IVR design cleaner and easier to manage. So say, for instance, you’re building a phone tree for an office. Don’t put your greeting and your office hours in the same sound file. This way, if someone wants to hear your office hours again, they don’t also have to listen to your greeting again, too.
• If none of this made any sense whatsoever, attend a CallFire webinar on Wednesdays at 11AM PST. Our trained solutions staff will decode everything I just conveyed, and help you apply it to your own uses.

Hope to see some of you at Twiistup! If you haven’t already gotten your tickets, buy them here. Remember, alongside all the other great CallFire giveaways, one lucky scavenger is going to walk away with a Kinect

by Dinesh Ravishanker, CEO

From the video:  “CallFire is in the virtual call center business. This puts our software at the forefront conversation for Political Phone Banks in the United States.  During each election season we experience double, sometimes triple the virtual call center usage we see at any other point in the year.  Moreover, our solutions team consults with political marketers to design powerful telephone surveys and notification campaigns critical to campaign managers interested in voter preference and geography relevant analytics.  These campaigns also provide less educated voters with digestible information required to make a next-day voting decision.

Over the course of 6 years in cloud telephony consulting, my team and I have participated in countless confidential conversations with technologists and campaign managers.  Often we discuss the marketing and advertising strategy used to garner support for their candidates.   Time and time again, we find political advertising strategies are not terribly different from a good brand advertising strategy.  Here are a few political advertising strategies that I have seen used over the last few years.”

Political advertising strategies

• Creativity – differentiate your candidate by developing a persona
• Use fresh voter registration data lists and don’t annoy voters
• Market your candidate in search results on Google and Bing
• Place site-targeted ads for your candidate on Political Websites
• Use Voice Broadcast target geographies with tailored messages
• Accept campaign contributions online, via phone & snail mail
• Enable volunteers to make voter-outreach calls from home
• Use data from phone or social media surveys for targeting
• Tailor communication by age, location & political affiliation
• Use a “Google surge” or “Network blast” in the days before an election
  
• Partner with an experienced Political Technology company (references below)
  
• Read our entire blog post on Political Marketing Tips in the Cloud

Keep It Simple Stupid

CTA (or Call-To-Action) & KISS (or Keep-It-Simple-Stupid) are probably the most overused acronyms board rooms and marketing meetings around the world.  But lets face it – most politicians have a lot to say, so it is extremely important to distill your candidate’s values in a clear and concise manner.  In the case of telephone marketing, a 30-40 seconds message works best, with the option to learn more if the listener desires.  In the case of social media advertising, some Twitter studies indicate that clickthrough rates are largely affected by CTA.  Advertisers who push products or services often use CTAs like  “click here for a Free Trial”, or “Learn more.”  In the dozens of political sound files I have personally listened to, almost all of them had a similar CTA.  Namely, “Vote for me, [candidate name] on election day” or “Press-1 to Donate Now”.   If you’re interested in optimizing a voice campaign, read the top 5 methods to making a successful Political Voice Blast.

Study historical data

There exists a plethora of political data on the web in the form of case studies, blogs and raw data.  So, why make the Political Advertising mistakes someone has already made for you?   Although this advice seems elementary, remember to DO YOUR RESEARCH.  We assume that’s why you’re reading this blog now.  Here are a few links to get you started:

Case studies
MoveOn.org uses Cloud IVR to collect voter data (LINK)
Equality California uses Cloud Call Center to harness the power of volunteers at home (LINK)
Thomas Kennedy wins Citrus County using Voice Broadcast (LINK)

Professional references
Patrick Michael Kane – Technology driven political advocacy expert, CTO & founder.  Former lead technology consultant for MoveOn.org, One.org, OFA and ActionKit.com clients.  Website: http://www.actionkit.com
Brian Donahue – Political Consultant & Founder of Craftdc.com Mr. Donahue has managed 4 Federal election campaigns and served on 2 presidential campaign staffs and Headed national 72-hour Task Force for RNC. Mr. Donahue also served as the Executive Director for Bush-Cheney ‘04. Website: http://www.CraftDC.com

Media
Dan Siroker Video – “How We Used Data to Win the Presidential Election” Stanford University & Dan Siroker – the former Data Analytics Manager for the Obama campaign.

Video: Brian Donahue – Political Strategist: http://www.gspm.org/brian-donahue-video -
Election Assistance Commission – Data from the 2008 election. Download the full report as zip.

by Natalia Klishina


There has been a lot of talk lately about trying to balance the cost-effectiveness of an automated IVR system with the responsiveness of a live call center. Customer dissatisfaction has been growing at alarming rates in the last few years, with the American Management Association finding that 68% of clients cease doing business with a company because of bad service. And 20% of the population has stopped using a particular credit card because of the waits involved in its customer service phone lines. This numbers spikes to 26% for high-income customers that know they are of high value and can go elsewhere. And if people complain about credit card hotlines, they have probably never experienced the bloated monstrosities that are government organization IVRs. The DMV, the state department, the immigration and naturalization agencies — they all make you want to kill something. We’ve all had experiences with automated answering systems that have been burnt into our memory like some terrible nightmare. However, IVR systems don’t have to be like that. For some reason, we seem not to realize that live customer service can often be just as terrible as any machine. We’ve somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that human beings simply must provide a much better customer service experience. Sometimes this is true, but it also comes at a much higher cost — both to the company, and often to the consumer, as well.

Let’s look at a company that’s probably more known for its excellent customer service than an actual product: Zappos. Zappos hires thousands of real live human beings to answer their phones. They have no scripts, they have no time limits, they’ll even pretend to be your friend (and that’s something we’re all very used to and comfortable with here in LA). And Zappos does something very unique when hiring its agents. After a few weeks of immersive training, they all get offered $1,000 (on top of compensation for the amount of time they’ve worked) to QUIT. This number originally started out as $100, went up to $500, and is scheduled to eventually surpass $1,000. Here is where many of you are probably scratching your heads, but anyone with hiring or management experience might think, “That’s brilliant!” Why? Because it weeds out people for whom $1,000 is worth more than their commitment to the company, helping maintain an energetic, customer-service-oriented culture. (For those of you wondering, about 10% of new agents end up taking up Zappos on their offer.)

Unfortunately, we can’t all do this; it simply wouldn’t be cost-efficient for most companies. According to a psychologist at International Business Machines Corp., the average cost per contact between an agent and customer is between $3 and $9 (compared to 5-7 cents with an automated system), which adds up VERY fast. For a company like Zappos, whose whole reputation stands on the quality of its customer service, the benefits outweigh the costs, but that doesn’t extend to everyone else. For example, back in 2007 Wal-Mart tried to completely remove its customer service number from its website. After a sizable backlash, they settled for burying the number in a hard-to-find spot – à la Amazon’s strategy. This is actually a very popular approach amongst retailers these days. For them, the financial benefits of providing live customer service on a sufficient scale simply wouldn’t cover the costs. This is the point where a large proportion of the exasperated public starts shouting that companies should care more about their customers than about making money, and so on and so forth, perhaps with some choice expletives included. Let’s get real here, though. People don’t shop at Wal-Mart for its customer service; they shop there because it’s cheap. And one of the ways in which they can afford to be cheap is by cutting down on customer service costs. Unfortunately, this is the real world, and there are necessary trade-offs in it. Companies would simply go bankrupt if they didn’t care about costs – and then where would you get your $38 Wal-Mart Pre-Lit 6.5’ White Artificial Christmas Tree this holiday season?

So yes, automated IVR systems are necessary, but they are not a necessary evil. What people don’t seem to realize, is that these systems don’t have to lead to bad customer service. Columnist for TMCnet Tracey Schelmetic writes that one of the best customer service experiences she’s ever had involved calling an American Airlines toll-free lost luggage recovery line and dealing with a speech-recognition-enabled IVR. The system helped her locate her luggage when the live human beings working at American Airlines had lost it. The lesson here is that IVR doesn’t have to be unpleasant to deal with – IF designed right. This, of course, raises the obvious question: What tools might you use to design an IVR? (Like CallFire’s very own IVR Designer. And of course, How do you design it right?

1. First, know what the ultimate purpose of most IVR systems is: Provide answers to frequent questions (like location and hours of operation) and solutions to simple problems (like finding out account balances or the status of deliveries), and direct callers to the appropriate agent for anything really complex or fraught with emotion, i.e. conversations involving fraud, accidents, injuries, etc.
2. Don’t offer too many options, so that customers become annoyed. For most people, four is pretty much the limit before their memory gives out and they no longer know what option 1 was. If you find yourself using up all the digits, and then even creating subsets, your customers will probably either be silently crying in a corner, frothing at the mouth and screaming expletives, or kicking their puppy and/or kitten. In any case, they’ll probably swear to never resort to dealing with you again. Another suggestion here would be to let the customer know right away, “please listen to the following #__ options.” That way they can mentally prepare themselves. (This is something Asurion does that’s been well-received.)
3. Offer self-service capabilities online as much as possible. Have a visible and helpful FAQ section, simplify every process, make things idiot-proof, etc. The best customer service is sometimes eliminating a need for one.
4. Learn to plan for high-volume call spikes. If your IVR always says, “we are experiencing an unusually high level of calls,” then it is no longer unusual, is it? Hire more agents or look into contracted services that will take messages for your during these spikes.
5. Get outside (and inside) opinions on FAQs.  Talk to your agents and see what simple questions they’re always answering and would like to see automated. Talk to your customers and find out what they think. Get as much feedback as possible, analyze it, and use it to improve your system.
6. Use humor and a relaxed tone (if appropriate to your company). For example, Geek Squad used to have an IVR system that, after listing all the regular options, said, “press five to hear a PC that has stopped working being fired from a cannon into a lake full of hungry piranha fish.” When you pressed five, you would actually hear the simulated noises. It’s reminiscent of the Office Space scene where the evil printer finally meets its demise at the hands of Peter, Michael, Samir, and a baseball bat – and it’s also funny. It helps with some of that frustration that customers calling into Geek Squad are undoubtedly experiencing when their electronic equipment ceases to function right.
7. Along the lines of the above point, personalize your IVR system. Almost all businesses use some sort of IVR system, and yet almost none of them record creative messages that reflect the company culture or say something unusual and memorable. For businesses where a large proportion of customer contact is through a contact center, this is a crucial opportunity to affect brand perception. If humor is appropriate for your company, use it. If not, think of something else. For example, Novotel – a hotel all about the right kind of ambiance – would say, “Life is stressful enough. While you are waiting for an agent, take these few seconds to breathe deep, refocus, relax, refresh.” Corny? Maybe. Better than a generic message? Definitely.
8. Use great voice talent.  This may or may not come as news to you, but who voices your IVR really matters. When insurer Aflac replaced a “cold and inconsistent” voice with a middle-aged female voice that sounded much warmer and more conversational, it saw a rise in phone calls, but a drop in callers wanting to speak to a live agent. It also found in a survey that customer satisfaction amongst callers rose by 7%. Similarly, Asurion hired a female actress, coached her to inflect her speech the way that an experienced live agent would, and recorded her voice, resulting in a 5% increase in customer satisfaction and a reduced call time due to customers using the automated system before asking to be transferred.
9. Tailor IVR shortcuts for power users.  If you have high-priority customers who are important to the company for whatever reason, consider providing them with another phone number or transfer code. This may or may not align with your company values, but it is efficient.
10. And finally, ALWAYS provide the option to speak to a representative, or clearly state between which hours one will be available. A good idea would probably be to make pressing zero that option, as that’s the number most people associate with reaching a representative. Remember, making it too hard to reach live help is the #1 mistake companies make in introducing self-service.

So keep all these in mind and start building a more cost-effective, responsive IVR system today with CallFire’s Hosted IVR.

1) Starting your IVR: All phone calls start with a HELLO

Make sure your outbound or inbound IVR always starts with a “Hello”.  It’s helpful to begin with a play tag that is just a greeting before you move into a menu tags before you start prompting your customer with the next action.

TIP: Good phone etiquette can get you a long way

2) Preventing infinite timeout loops

One of the critical things to know while designing your Cloud IVR is if you want to create some sort of loop back in timeout. If you want to timeout to force a customer to repeat a step, be mindful of answering machines.  If an answering machine  is detected as live, then it can repeat that timeout an infinite amount of times resulting in hugely expensive calls.

TIP: A simple counter node can be created using the setvar (set variable) tag. If you need setvar tag help, contact us for a solution (email: support[at]callfire.com).

3) Indentations and dependencies are like essay outlines

XML scripting languages and the IVR designer interface are set up much like an outline in Word. Things that are dependent on something above them are indented like that. When pulling things down however, things won’t indent the right way even though you want them to. Don’t forget that the buttons all the way on the right can change dependency level.

TIP: Always use the buttons on the right to prevent this issue.

4) Key press tags require a press menu tag and vice versa

All key press tags must be contained in a press menu. You can’t have them floating out by themselves. One of the most common errors that occur are press tags that improperly or not nested in the press menu. So, check your script, and if in doubt call technical support. (877-897-3473)

5) Testing text-to-speech

When using one of the text-to-speech voices it always good to run at least one test phone call just to make sure that it is pronouncing everything the way you intended. For example, the world “invalid” is never pronounced \(ˌ)in-ˈva-ləd\ but instead the prounounced \ˈin-və-ləd\ relating to someone who is suffering from disease.  In order to enable it to pronounce the word correctly you must split these types of words up into 2 words. “In” + “Valid”.

Other common issues: The number stream 1,2,3,4,5,6 will be pronounced “One hundred twenty three thousand four hundred fifty six”. To prevent that visit the help documentation for CallFire XML, look under the setvar tag, and the special scenario section has a tag to explode the number into individual numbers with spaces between them.  There can be other pronunciation issues so it’s important to conduct a test call.

Using these tried and tested tips can save you a significant amount of time during development and will allow your Cloud IVR to be more effective. If you have other tips you’ve come across while setting up your own IVR, let us know in the comments below!

This is a re-post of an older post.  But a great reminder for those of you who haven’t yet taken advantage of IVR Designer!  Build your custom inbound or outbound phone experience, for only 5c/minute

We are thrilled to announce the release of our newest product: Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) ! This product fills an important gap in the telephony space allowing quality of conversation that’s much better than traditional automated messages and yet not require a live call center representative. IVRs are widely used for large enterprises, but with this release, we are democratizing the technology space for the smaller to mid-size businesses. Hosted IVR’s robust capabilities offer a comprehensive solution for a large variety of telecom needs.

What can you do with Hosted IVR?

Core to our Hosted IVR product is the user-friendly IVR designer, which offers drag and drop functionality for non-technical users empowering them to create complex survey’s,  and meeting reminders via an intuitive, engaging user interface.. This capability widens the range of users who can individually build their own IVRs, something that historically could only be done by a developer.

The ease of use, however, does not decrease the feature set. Features that include reading text from a specific excel column using text to speech, complex dial plans, recording of responses, and more.  These features support a plethora of customer uses creating a high degree of personalization in the conversation. For example, the IVR can be used for a virtual receptionist that will route phone calls, Comprehensive phone surveys that will compile results, or Customized appointment reminders. The IVR can either be sent out to a list of phone numbers or assigned to a specific phone number that can receive incoming calls.

Click for more information about Hosted IVR and IVR designer

For developer documentation, see the Custom Telephony page

We are thrilled to announce the release of our newest product: Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) ! This product fills an important gap in the telephony space allowing quality of conversation that’s much better than traditional automated messages and yet not require a live call center representative. IVRs are widely used for large enterprises, but with this release, we are democratizing the technology space for the smaller to mid-size businesses. Hosted IVR’s robust capabilities offer a comprehensive solution for a large variety of telecom needs.

IVR Designer Interface

Core to our Hosted IVR product is the user-friendly IVR designer, which offers drag and drop functionality for non-technical users empowering them to create complex survey’s,  and meeting reminders via an intuitive, engaging user interface.. This capability widens the range of users who can individually build their own IVRs, something that historically could only be done by a developer.

The ease of use, however, does not decrease the feature set. Features that include reading text from a specific excel column using text to speech, complex dial plans, recording of responses, and more.  These features support a plethora of customer uses creating a high degree of personalization in the conversation. For example, the IVR can be used for a virtual receptionist that will route phone calls, Comprehensive phone surveys that will compile results, or Customized appointment reminders. The IVR can either be sent out to a list of phone numbers or assigned to a specific phone number that can receive incoming calls.

Click for more information about Hosted IVR and IVR designer

For developer documentation, see the Custom Telephony page